James McAvoy: "Ez ji bo psîkanalîzê mijarek balkêş im"

Before the helmet, he takes off his leather jacket. He has heavy boots on. Jeans with holes. Casio watches cost around $100. But above all this is the most open, cheerful look. We meet in the area where he lives, which looks like an old English country town. My interlocutor squints blissfully, exposing his face to the rays, but I can not resist and not be sarcastic. But it turned out that sincere intemperance is the best way to win over this man.

Psîkolojî: You once said that you consider freckles to be the main disadvantage of your appearance. And the sun is so good for them!

James McAvoy: Yes, they breed in the sun, I know. But it was an answer to a glamor magazine’s stupid question: «What do you dislike about your appearance?» As if it’s so incomprehensible that I’m not Brad Pitt.

Would you like to have the external data of Brad Pitt?

Yes, I am nothing. I have an average height, paper-white skin, five kilos of freckles — all paths are open in front of me! No, really. I am not a hostage of my data, I can be whoever you want. That is, I want to say that I looked good with a ponytail and on hooves — in The Chronicles of Narnia. Agree, Brad Pitt in this role would take the film far towards the grotesque.

I was probably 23-24, I starred in «… And in my soul I dance.» And then I realized something about myself — it’s good that it’s quite early. It was a film about the inhabitants of a home for the disabled, unable to move independently. I played an amazing, full of life guy with a diagnosis of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, this is muscle atrophy, leading to almost complete paralysis.

To play this role, it was not enough for me to learn the plasticity of those suffering from this disease, that is, complete immobility. I talked a lot with people with this diagnosis. And I learned that they prefer to remain unnoticed. Because they are afraid of pity.

I then suddenly felt that such a position was somehow very close to me. I have nothing to pity for, that’s not the point. But I like to be ordinary and in this sense inconspicuous. Meter seventy. I don’t sunbathe. Gray hair. Average European.

It is not clear how you became an actor and a star with such an opinion about yourself.

Firstly, I did not aspire to either one or the other. And secondly, in my youth I was much more ordinary than is generally necessary for life. I was 15 and I wanted something more than being a normal kid from a normal school in a normal area of ​​Glasgow. I was not an excellent student and did not get noticed by the juvenile inspection, the girls did not particularly like me, but I was not refused when I invited someone to dance. I wanted to be at least something special.

And then a rock band appeared at school. And it turned out that you can be somewhat different, different, and such people suddenly surrounded me. I stopped being afraid to be different. I left the circle of safety, where everyone was like everyone else. And then the literature teacher invited her neighbor, actor and director David Hayman, to our school to talk about cinema and theater. And Hayman played Lady Macbeth in an all-male theater production here in Glasgow.

It was a famous performance! And the guys from our school… In general, the meeting was not very positive. And I decided to thank Hayman — so that he does not think that he wasted his time on us. Although, maybe earlier, before the rock band, I would not have dared — this is an act “not like everyone else”.

Û paşê çi qewimî?

And the fact that Hayman, oddly enough, remembered me. And when, after three months, he was preparing to shoot The Next Room, he invited me to play a small role. But I didn’t think of becoming an actor. I studied well and got a place in the English department at the university. I did not go there, but entered the Naval Academy.

But an invitation came from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Theatre, and I did not become a naval officer. So everything is pretty normal. I am a person of quite ordinary actions, everything exceptional happens to me exclusively on the screen.

After all, you’ve done at least two unusual things outside of your profession. Married a woman almost 10 years older than you and divorced after ten years of a seemingly cloudless marriage …

Yes, Ann Mary, my ex-wife, is older than me. But, you won’t believe it, it never really mattered. We met on the set of Shameless, we had a common cause, one profession, common interests and an indivisible life. Do you understand? I can’t even say that at first we had an affair, and then we connected.

It was all at once — love, and we are together. That is, it was immediately clear that now we are together. No premarital courtship, no special romantic courtesy. We immediately got together. What didn’t matter was the age.

But, as far as I know, you grew up without a father … There is an opinion, perhaps philistine, that boys who grew up in single-parent families tend to seek parental attention from those who are older than them …

Yes, I’m generally a good object for psychoanalysis! And you know, I calmly look at these things. We are all good for some kind of analysis… I was 7 when my parents divorced. My sister and I moved to live with my grandparents. Grandpa was a butcher. And my mother either lived with us, or not — we were born when she was still very young, she had to study, work. She became a psychiatric nurse.

We lived with grandparents. They never lied to us. They didn’t say, for example: you can become whoever you want. This is not true, I do not want to sow false hopes in my child either. But they said: you have to try to become what you want, or at least become someone. They were realists. I received a practical, non-illusory upbringing.

Until the age of 16, he lived according to strict rules approved by his grandmother. But at 16, I suddenly noticed that I could do whatever I wanted, and my grandmother, seeing me to a party, reminded me that I had to go for a beer. My grandparents waited for the moment when they could trust me, when I was able to make my own decisions and be responsible for them … At 16, it was an amazing adventure — my own decisions. And as a result, I’m actually quite practical.

I know who I am, where I come from… When I received my first BAFTA award, there was an interview with my father in a tabloid that I didn’t really know. He said he would be happy to meet me.

It surprised me: why would he? I definitely don’t need to — I have no questions about the past, there is nothing unclear in it, I do not need to look for any answers. I know what made me who I am and I look at things from a practical point of view. Life has developed in such a way that we practically do not know each other. Well, there is nothing to stir up the old.

But life also turned out well, you see. What if she didn’t work out?

My best, probably best friend, Mark, and I recalled what we were like at 15. Then we had a feeling: no matter what happens to us, we will be fine. Even then he said: well, even if in 15 years we will be washing cars on the side of the road in Drumtochti, we will still be fine. And now we have decided that we will subscribe to this now. I have this optimistic feeling — that the question is not what place I occupy under the sun, but how I feel about myself.

Therefore, I am amused by colleagues who insist on signs of their status — on these huge dressing room trailers, on personal hairdressers and the size of the letters of the names on the posters. There are too many canons in the world to comply with the status … For me, there are definitely a lot.

In general, this desire for a solo under the sun is incomprehensible to me. I am a team member by nature. Maybe that’s why I ended up in a high school rock band — what’s the point of playing great if the rest of the team is out of tune? It is important that the overall sound is harmonious.

I liked it at the theater academy, and in this profession, because theater, cinema is a team game, and it depends on the make-up artist, on the artist no less than on the actor, although he is under the spotlights, and they are behind the scenes. And all this becomes obvious if you look from a practical point of view.

Look, it’s not always possible to stay sane. There are also feelings. For example, you got divorced, although your son Brendan is 6 years old …

But not being afraid of your feelings and understanding them is the most practical thing in life! To understand that something is over, that the content no longer matches the form … Let’s say our relationship with Ann-Mary has turned into a strong friendship, we are comrades-in-arms and friends. But it’s not a marriage, is it? Each of us wants to experience some more feelings that have become impossible in our union.

By the way, that’s why after the divorce we continued to live together for another year — not only so as not to destroy Brendan’s way of life, but because each of us had no serious personal plans. We are still close friends and always will be.

Do not make a naked ratio out of me — sometimes I succumb to the dictates of feelings. For example, I initially refused to star in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, although I fell in love with both the script and the role. But there the motive and the source of the plot is the death of the hero’s little son. And shortly before that, Brendan was born. I absolutely did not want to try on such a loss. Could not. And the role was wonderful, and the film could come out amazingly poignant, but I still couldn’t step over this fact in the script.

But then you still played in this film?

A year has passed, feelings subsided. I no longer panicked that something would happen to Brendan. I’m used to it being okay when I have Brendan. By the way, yes — this is the exceptional thing that happened to me outside the cinema and the stage — Brendan.

I’ll tell you even more… Sometimes activists, fighters for the independence of Scotland, try to involve me in their campaigns. Do you know what their purpose is? To make us Scots richer after independence. What is the incentive to get richer?

A century ago, the Irish fought for independence and were ready to die for it. Is anyone ready to shed blood for this «become richer»? This I mean that practicality is not always a worthy motivator. In my opinion, only feelings can be a real incentive to action. Everything else, as they say, is decay.